Anissa Mack, Your Past a Star, at Small A Projects [Photographs]

We were on the Lower East Side this weekend, so expect photographs and notes about that along with some other things this week.  Anissa Mack's show was a nice surprise: tight, taut curios like the faux-jeans below and a Susan B. Anthony dollar coin, sliced in two and turned into a set of necklaces, among other things.  More photographs on the flickr account. Click the photographs for bigger versions.

Anissa Mack, Your Past a Star
Small A Projects
261 Broome Street
New York, New York
Through July 2, 2009
Photo: 16 Miles     [more]

Charles Ray, Ink Line, Moving Wire, Spinning Spot, Matthew Marks [Photographs]

Charles Ray, Ink Line, 1987.  Photo: 16 Miles.


Charles Ray, Spinning Spot, 1987.  Photo: 16 Miles.


Charles Ray at Matthew Marks [Installation view].  Photo: 16 Miles


Charles Ray at Matthew Marks [Installation view].  Photo: 16 Miles

Charles Ray, Ink Line, Moving Wire, Spinning Spot
Matthew Marks Gallery
523 West 24th Street
New York, New York
Through June 27, 2009

Lee Stoezel, Big Fall, at Mixed Greens [Photographs]

Lee Stoezel, Big Fall, 2008-2009.  Photo: 16 Miles     [more]

Lee Stoezel, Big Burn Out (Chuck Close), 2009.     [more]


Lee Stoezel, Big Bike, 2008-2009.     [more]


Lee Stoezel, Big Fall, 2008-2009.     [more]

Lee Stoezel, Hard Fried (After Oldenburg), 2009.     [more]

Lee Stoezel, Big Fall

Mixed Greens

531 West 26th Street

New York, New York

Through May 23, 2009

Ernesto Neto, anthropodino, at the Park Avenue Armory [Photographs]

Ernesto Neto, anthropodino, 2009, at the Park Avenue Armory.  Photo: 16 Miles   [more]

Ernesto Neto

anthropodino

Park Avenue Armory

Through June 14, 2009

Photos: 16 Miles   [more]

Jessica Stockholder, Flooded Chambers Maid, at Madison Square Park [Photographs]

Jessica Stockholder, Flooded Chambers Maid [Installation view], 2009, at Madison Square Park. Photo: 16 Miles.   [more]

Jessica Stockholder, Flooded Chambers Maid, 2009

Madison Square Park, 5th Avenue and 23rd Street

May 1 - August 15, 2009

Photographs: 16 Miles

The Mona Lisa, David Zwirner, and Art Pastries [Collected]

Alice Neel, Nadya and Nona, 1933, at Alice Neel: Nudes of the 1930's, at Zwirner & Wirth.  Photo: 16 Miles.

• In August 1911, an aspiring artist born in Italy stole the Mona Lisa.
• The whole sordid story is detailed in a new book.
• In May 1962, André Malraux told Jackie that he would loan it to the United States.
• In February 1963, sprinklers at The Metropolitan Museum of Art almost destroyed the work.  [via Hrag Vartanian]
• Thankfully, according to Jerry Saltz, the Francis Bacons at The Met are enclosed under glass (Bacon's decision).  He is not a fan.  Smith is more divided.
• Smith has the best line of the week: "Sigmar Polke is like Robert Ryman, only crazy."

• If you won't be going to the Alice Neel shows at David Zwirner and Zwirner & Wirth soon, there's a massive slideshow.
• Selling art from artists' estate makes everyone happy.
• But Zwirner and Wirth will soon close.  Hauser and Wirth will open their first public gallery in America in the current Z&W building: four, fresh floors of art, inaugurated by a recreation of Allan Kaprow's 1961 classic YARD. David Zwirner will show his secondary market program in a new gallery, reportedly across from his 19th Street galleries.  It will be called Zwirner.  Jacobs by Marc Jacobs for Marc by Marc Jacobs in collaboration with Marc Jacobs for Marc by Marc Jacobs.

• Pastry Link: Thiebaud-inspired cakes at SFMOMA.  [via C-Monster]

Theoretical Girls, Kim Gordon, and The Pictures Generation

Theoretical Girls, "U.S. Mille" b/w "You Got Me" (7-inch), 1978, at The Pictures Generation, 1974-1984.  Photo: 16 Miles   [more]

Theoretical Girls, [Detail of note of lyrics for] "U.S. Mille" b/w "You Got Me" (7-inch), 1978, at The Pictures Generation, 1974-1984.  Photo: 16 Miles   [more]

"People pay to see others believe in themselves. Maybe people don’t know whether they can experience the erotic or whether it exists only in commercials..."   - Kim Gordon, "I'm Really Scared When I Kill in My Dreams," Artforum, 1983.

"I don't even know if it's true. But like Kim's performance of 'I Wanna Be Your Dog,' it was a scary thought. And I thought, this woman knows stuff that I don't know."   - Greil Marcus, Interview, Addicted to Noise, 1997.

I did not know that Kim Gordon got the title of her essay from the lyrics of a Theoretical Girls song.  Thank you, The Pictures Generation, 1974 - 1984, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Also, how cool is the vintage, 1978 Scientology shout-out in "U.S. Mille"?

Listen: "You Got Me"

Contemporary Art in Madrid [Guide]

View complete list and larger map.

Part 1: Around the Reina Sofía [yellow]

Part 2: Chueca [orange]

Part 3: Calle Orfila and Elsewhere [red]

Ham so fatty that it will melt in your mouth as you cry with happiness.  Cheap, delicious wine from Catalonia.  Bars stocked with tapas of steak, foie gras, olives, and pretty much everything else we love. There are lots of reasons to love Madrid.  It turns out that its contemporary art scene is another.  Above is our three-part guide to it.  It's partial and incomplete, but hopefully it'll provide a few ideas for you if you're planning a visit.  One more pleasing feature: the gallery hours.  Most spaces are open Tuesday to Saturday from 11:00 am to 2:00 pm, then close for a lengthy lunch for everyone involved, before reopening from 5:00 pm to 8:30 pm. 

Contemporary Art in Madrid [Part 3 of 3: Calle Orfila and Elsewhere]

Juan José Aquerreta, Últimamente [installation view], at Galería Marlborough. Photo: 16 Miles.   [more]


Juan José Aquerreta, Últimamente [installation view], at Galería Marlborough.  Photo: 16 Miles.   [more]

Just north of the Prado, tucked away just off the Calle de Génova, a main thoroughfare through Madrid, sits Calle Orfila, home to more galleries on a single block than probably any other in the city.  Below are three of our favorites, followed by an obligatory, inadequate reference to the Reina Sofía.

Galería Marlborough
Orfila, 5
The Marlborough empire stretches into Madrid, focusing here on Spanish artists.  Juan José Aquerreta paintings - elegant little still lifes that suggest Morandi if he had decided to paint bright, glimmering fruit and rich, dark pottery - were on display on our visit.  The gallery itself is large and airy space; well worth a visit.  


Erik Schmidt, Recurrent Morning Manliness, 2009, at Galería Soledad Lorenzo. Photo: 16 Miles.   [more]

Galería Soledad Lorenzo
Orfila, 5
Soledad Lorenzo sits right next door to Marlborough and shares its address.  Though equally ambitious (they represent Catalan superstar Antoni Tàpies), their program veers toward the more adventurous, having worked with Tony Oursler, Jennifer Steinkamp, and Robert Longo.  Having just seen a show of Erik Schmidt's impastoed canvases at Elizabeth Dee a few months ago, walking in to find more of his work on a random street in Madrid was a particular uncanny experience.  He handles his thick, heavy paint so lightly it could be meringue.  The title of his work above is a winner.

Galería Cayón
Ofila, 10
Galería Cayón largely focuses on secondary market work, but they feature that choice material, usually grounded in minimalism and international, in frequent group shows.  


Leandro Erlich, The Tower, 2008, at the Reina Sofía. Photo: 16 Miles.   [more]

Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
Santa Isabel, 52
Spain's national museum could comfortably curate its permanent collection throughout its enormous series of buildings (or just store away everything but Guernica) and still be one of the world's best, most-visited art museums.  It turns out that the staff does a great job with their collection but also finds time to tackle major contemporary projects.  Paul Thek, who still so absurdly marginalized in American museums (though his work regularly on display at the Walker is one of the first works of art I remember seeing as a kid), gets a major retrospective in one gallery, Richard Serra dominates another with a permanent installation.  A tower of mirrors (brutally underserved by my photographs) built by Leandro Erlich (responsible for the faux-swimming pool at P.S.1 at the moment) and videos by Alia Syed rounded out the pretty remarkable selection of artists.

Roy Lichtenstein, Brushstroke, 1996, at the Reina Sofía. Photo: 16 Miles.   [more]

Contemporary Art in Madrid [Part 2 of 3: Chueca]

Darya von Berner, In Love with Unreality, 2009, at Galería Moriarty. Photo: 16 Miles. [more]


Ivan Perez, Bird's Nest, 2009, at Galería Moriarty. Photo: 16 Miles.   [more]

Quaint pâtisseries sit alongside ancient bars and galleries abut chic boutiques in Chueca.  With a seedy past (prostitution, drugs, and so forth) and a monied present, it vaguely suggests today's Lower East Side.  It is also home to some of the stronger members of Madrid's younger art generation.

Galería Moriarty
Libertad, 22
Approaching age thirty, they’re one of the older galleries in Chueca, and, though their biggest star is probably Ryan McGinness, their fifteen artists generally occupy points far away from his manic effervescence. Chema Madoz, for one, detourns commonplace objects into eerie, sometimes frightening sculptures. For A Coney Island of the Mind, the group show we saw, he contributed a Gucci perfume bottle rebuilt as a hypodermic syringe. To enter, you had to use a subway ticket printed with poetry (provided by the gallery) to pass through Darya von Berner’s subway turnstile bathed in pink neon light. Thanks to the strength of the work inside (many from the gallery’s roster), it was a bit of theater that functioned perfectly. 


Christopher Muller and Alex Jasch, Das Ding Ding [installation view], at Heinrich Ehrhardt. Photo: 16 Miles.   [more]

Heinrich Ehrhardt
San Lorenzo, 11
Part of Heinrich Ehrhardt’s office is located above the floor of the gallery, overlooking the main space like a sentry tower. At first it felt awkward, as if we were being watched from above. After overcoming that feeling, though, viewing art here was a pleasure, especially because the space is tucked within a quiet courtyard off of San Lorenzo. Ehrhardt represents Ulrich Rückriem, Pedro Reyes, Anselm Reyle, and Tobias Rehberger, among others, with roots going back to the early 1980’s.

Galería Elba Benítez [exterior]. Photo: 16 Miles.   [more]

Galería Elba Benítez
San Lorenzo, 11

Also hiding off San Lorenzo, Elba Benítez shows work by Beatriz Milhazes, Ernesto Neto, and Vik Muniz (who must have more gallery representation than any other living artist), along with nearly a score of other artists.  David Goldblatt was showing photographs taken in South Africa for his In the Time of AIDS project when we visited.  They’re celebrating their twentieth birthday next year. 


Travesia Cuatro [exterior]. Photo: 16 Miles.   [more]


Yuri Masnyj, Everybody's Concerns [installation view], at Travesia Cuatro. Photo: 16 Miles.     [more]

Travesia Cuatro
San Mateo, 16
My stellar Spanish skills (honed largely via extensive use of Google) can tell you that their name means “Crossing Four” or “Passage Four”, a reference to the location of their shop when they opened back in 2003.  Yuri Masnyj, an American who shows with Metro Pictures in New York, had sculptures and drawings on display when we went.  Most of their other artists are early to mid-career artists from Spain.  Wires from some sculptures pierced into walls and remerged a few inches away.  Plywood pieces, spray- and hand painted, then fused together, balanced precariously around the space.  They just moved into a new space.  Ambitious material in every way. 

Lien Carrazana, De la serie Hábitat: Untitled, 2007, at Luz & Suárez del Villar. Photo: 16 Miles.   [more]

Luz & Suárez del Villar
San Lorenzo, 3

Lien Carrazana and Lindomar Placencia Padron, two young Cuban artists, had a show up at this tiny, young (founded in 2008) space when we wandered in, looking for the mysterious courtyard on San Lorenzo featuring Elba Benítez and Heinrich Ehrhardt.  The former provided still life, color photographs of subtle mysteries (a Matryoshka doll sitting comfortably in an ice box), the latter two short videos: an endless loop of a woman descending an escalator, a series of windows.  It turns out the entire roster is Cuban with birthdates floating in the late 70’s and early 80’s.  I assume they can ship your purchase surreptitiously back to America.  Let’s hope this works.    

Galería Oliva Arauna [exterior]. Photo: 16 Miles.   [more]


Alfredo Jaar at Galería Oliva Arauna. Photo: 16 Miles.   [more]

Galería Oliva Arauna
Barquillo, 29

The heavy, towering door of metal and opaque glass here makes even some formidable Chelsea venues seem comparatively inviting.  Inside, though, it’s all warmth and friendliness.  Volver, a group show of hefty sculptures and paintings, was up when we visited.  Alfredo Jaar popped up again and again around Spain, and it seems that Oliva Arauna is a major reason for that.  They've been showing his work for twenty years.  

Contemporary Art in Madrid [Part 1 of 3: Around the Reina Sofía]

The House the Cat Built [installation view], at Galería Salvador Díaz. Photo: 16 miles [more]

Most contemporary art spaces in Madrid are clustered in a few main areas, packed fairly closely together in each.  We'll start today with some galleries located in the southern section of the city near the Reina Sofía. This isn't even close to an exhaustive guide (Artforum provides a thorough listing in their international section), but here are a few places we enjoyed.

Galería Salvador Díaz
Sanchez Bustillo, 7

I can’t even begin to imagine the economics of running a gallery across the plaza from the Reina Sofía, but Galeria Salvador Díaz has been doing that in a massive space for over a decade.  They predominantly show Spanish artists, but they also host some ambitious programs curated by outsiders.  We arrived to see a Rirkrit Tiravanija-organized show that featured some of the people you’d expect (Liam Gillick, Gabriel Kuri) and some surprises (Martha Rosler, Jakob Kolding) assembled in a plywood recreation of his home in Thailand.  

Shimabuku, Heart for Rirkrit, 2009, at Galería Salvador Díaz.   Photo: 16 miles [more]

The House the Cat Built [installation view], at Galería Salvador Díaz. Photo: 16 miles [more]

Angela Bulloch, Smoked, Formed, & Quartered, 2009, at Galería Helga de Alvear.  Photo: 16 Miles   [more]

Galería Helga de Alvear
Doctor Fourquet, 12
Housed in an elegant two-story space, Helga de Alvear usually does two shows at a time just down the street from the Reina Sofia.  Angela Bulloch and Jorge Queiroz were showing work when we visited, part of a group of about twenty-five largely well-established artists in their roster, including Elmgreen & Dragset, Isaac Julien, Imi Knoebel, and Santiago Sierra, who recently had his “Los penetrados” show here.

Outside La Casa Encendida.  Photo: 16 Miles. [more]

La Casa Encendida
Ronda Valencia, 2

The closest New York parallel to La Casa Encendida may be the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The selection of films, theatrical productions (housed in their massive, enclosed courtyard), and workshops that they run certainly seemed as impressive and varied as BAM’s.  In addition, they throw in a huge visual arts component.  There was a show of photographs depicting New York on loan from the Museum of Modern Art when we visited.  Do I want to travel two thousand miles to look at photographs from the museum I have probably spent more time in than any other?  Yes, when it’s accompanied by some of the best guides to individual artists I’ve ever seen in a museum.

Installing works by Antonio Ballester Moreno at Maisterravalbuena.  Photo: 16 Miles.

Maisterravalbuena
Doctor Fourquet, 1
On the way to Galería Helga de Alvear we strolled into Maisterravalbeuna as the staff was hard at work hanging paintings by Antonio Ballester Moreno (who has shown with Peres Projects) for his opening.  Only later did we learn that the wonderful Kate Gilmore is part of their eight-artist team.  Choice work.


CaixaForum Madrid. Photo: 16 Miles. [more]

CaixaForum Madrid
Paseo Prado, 36

Due to the magic of Spanish law, the country’s banking industry is non-profit, its earnings earmarked for public projects like lavish museums and epic exhibitions.  Hence the Herzog & de Meuron-designed CaixaForum Madrid, which is housed in an old, brick power plant.  The first floor has been sliced away and appears to float on a cube of glass.  Inside, there’s plenty of steel, wood, and more glass, as well as a bookstore with an impressive selection of art books.  It amounts to an umbilical cord of gold that seems to function relatively well. 

CaixaForum Madrid. Photo: 16 Miles. [more]